Recently there has been a surge in the free classified sites in India where in they have been promoted very high through TVC’s. A simple mantra which says sell everything for free without paying any fees or commissions by just uploading the photos from your smart phone and listing it. Expect a lot of feedback from users and convert the sale. This sounds good but you need to make sure that you don’t end up meeting scammers on these sites. Free classified sites like olx.in & quickr.com are easy to use, the listing part is also very easy and you start getting a lot of offers, but the sad part is that 95% of those interested would call you up and ask for a better deal or a discount first. Next they would be interested in meeting, looking into the product and then decide if they would like to pay or not.
In case of ebay.in the company itself guarantees both the parties and the seller gets his payment only when the buyer confirms the receipt of the product as it was mentioned in the listing. This is most of the times very important because it safeguards not only your money but also your time and also ensures that you don’t have to keep meeting the other party regularly. The discounts / better deals is out of question mostly because on ebay you generally post your best price in the listing and if it suits the buyer they proceed with the purchase, apart from which they also get generally around 5-7% of additional discounts from ebay itself.
Here is a story of my cousin who had sold his phone through a listing on olx.in and got scammed from a person called “Harshavardhan Reddy Pidathala”
He had listed his sale on olx.in for free following which he had received many calls from different prospective buyers. Out of these the above mentioned person ie “Harshavardhan Reddy” informed him on phone that he is going to purchase the Phone and would like to meet. My cousin met him at their planned meeting point where in the buyer came in Fortuner Car, which gave a remark that this guy is mostly not going to scam. The deal was for cash payment but after verifying the product, he said he didn’t get the cash as he didn’t get the salary and would like to pay by check, which my cousin accepted. [Sadly he is new to all this didn’t expect what happened next.]
Following this the next day he deposited the check in the bank and later the payment was cleared and transferred to his bank account, but by the end of the day his payment was reverted back and was debited back from his account with the following message.
Next the phone buyer would daily call up on phone and check for the bank account because he would mention that he would transfer it through Wire Transfer / NEFT. The sad thing is that never happened and he had mentioned that he had graduated from Sheffield Hallam University and is not a scammer but never made the payment for the purchase. He had even insisted that his friends would pay the money through cash because he had to visit Bangalore for some work and also mentioned that his salary was not credited. He works with Lebara Mobile where according to him he has a part time job and he mentioned that the salary is not paid to them on time by the company.
All the above statements were a mere excuse by the person who claimed to have graduated from a creditable university and it looks like a joke because these days people think its easy to scam people and sometimes these kind of classified sites help them. What are your thoughts about this whole issue and what are your suggestions to my cousin in this issue?
Akash says
Well who cares about OLX when we have a trusted site like Ebay?
Amit Bhawani says
There are thousands who are going for olx since its easy to use, no need to go through long forms. Mobile app is very easy too.
Andy says
Akash, you are lucky you haven’t really experienced the dark side of eBay/Paypal. And, I hope you never have to go through that experience. The day you experienced their dark side, you will be in love with OLX and other services 🙂
yash sehgal says
Accepting a cheque was really a foolish thing to do.One should be really careful when dealing on such sites and should not fall to such scams.
Amit Bhawani says
Very true.
Gaurav Soni says
True i agree its not safe as i have seen many of in my group to suffer from OLX service. they don’t even ask for mobile number verification. so if you put some wrong number by mistake so all calls would be going to harrase the person who doesn’t know anything and he cant even stop this calls…
Ninika says
I don’t think that OLX website is like a scam. Because, I made many deals and all were good and safe. Mistake is of seller to accept check. How we can say that it is mistake of OLX.IN.
Amit Bhawani says
I never said that the site is a scam, its the comparison with ebay and information mentioned that its not as safe.
junaid says
Shit your deals,,olx and quikr are the worst coz the allow anyone to post,,scammers post attractive ads with their banner and all,, I called the person for product he said he’ll deliver me after he gets payment,,asked me to deposit in his account and he didn’t care after I deposit just foolin me around and doing nothing
Farhan says
Ebay needs to be more user friendly like olx. people use olx just because it is much more user friendly than ebay.
VISSU says
IS OLX REALLY A SCAM WEBSITE?
IAM CONFUSED CAN U EXPLAIN ME BREIFLY HOW TO GET RID OF THIS SCAMS?
Naim says
Dear Amit,
OLX should be least blamed here. Your cousin should have never handed over the phone.
Same thing could have happened on Ebay if the guy has messaged him to meet up and do the same.
Nevertheless, Ebay is far more better than OLX though.
Amit Bhawani says
I did mention that fact and you do accept that ebay is better right 🙂
Gowthaman says
To be honest, OLX like websites works well for certain type of products like Automobiles, Aquariums, Properties etc. Where the seller and the buyer has to meet. For electronics, eBay works great. However, I wouldn’t accept a cheque from a stranger and hand-over my product.
Aman says
I am looking for a 15″ macbook pro with retina and to my surprise i found people selling brand new ones for 30000 INR. I know that its not possible but m lured at the same time. These ads didn’t have any contact numbers. I am not sure even if they sell me one whether it will b a genuine thing or not. I don’t plan to pay anything upfront. What do I do?
vikas says
I have made 2 deals using olx.in. So i can say that it’s not scam. But as it provides a free dealing platform…so for scammers it’s an easy option. But we can’t blame olx for what happened with your cousin. Their aim is to provide ads, its we who have to take care before making any deal.
Kumar says
Did u pples complained ? did the scammer caught ? Did your cousin got mobile ?
Amit Bhawani says
No not yet!
Kumar says
Did u catch him? U got ur cell ?
kumar says
did you got your mobile back or amount and did u catch that person???
Pawan says
Sorry for your cousin but he should not have accepted the check in very first place. Don’t belive that person coming in fortuner and does not have 15K money with him.
Rajendra Reddy says
I run a free classifieds ads website, I always say OlX is not a scam, buyers should be careful before they buy something from such free classifieds ads website.
Abhishek says
As said from ages.
CASH IS KING, Believe in Cash & only Cash.
Roop aur avatar pe math jaao. Had he given the FORTUNER for a month to use then somehow that 15k would have been vasool!
Raja Rani says
Its our duty to be cautious. He should not have sold for cheque (dot. thats it). Also Everybody and anybody will get motivated to cheat if you find some seems like a victim.
So its our duty to be cautious.
Michael Brown says
100% agree with Amit Bhawani and what is said in the article. All these classified sites are nonsense asking people to Buy, Sell or Rent for free anything first. Then making money through advertisements whats the crap is it. Have seen personally these individual sites worst content, least bothered, lowest class sites only want traffic. We must support our own india’s very clean & clear classified sites like sulekha.com, etc. Amit Bhawani I support you and we must say that see and learn from sulekha what a sincere in the work and listings.
These all new classified sites like OLX, Quikr, Locanto, etc.. wont know what they want to do zero scope in this and think people shouldn’t rely on such sites.
venkatesham kota says
Iam tried to sell Nokia lumia mobile through OLX , lot of unwanted call came but I am not able sold my mobile at my price .
MILIND says
Dear Amitji,
I wanted to meeet you regarding the website , adsence and blogs.
when can you meet.
My contact number is 9819434524
Dombivli
Thanks and Regards
MILIND
sunil says
Sorry to say…it was foolish to accept cheque from the buyer !!!
madhu says
Hai
I want to selling my mobile (intex aqua power 2)